| Net Worth: | $200 Billion |
|---|---|
| Age: | 49 |
| Born: | June 28, 1971 |
| Country of Origin: | United States |
| Source of Wealth: | Business |
| Last Updated: | 2023 |
Introduction
Elon Musk is a South African-born Canadian-American businessman, industrial designer, engineer, chief designer, investor, product architect, CEO, co-founder, co-chairman, and a multi-billionaire with a net worth of $200 billion, and he is by far one of the richest people on earth.
Elon’s fame started with the PayPal mafia, the team behind the PayPal payment service.
The famous actor Robert Downey Jr. when he wanted to play the role of the genius billionaire Tony stark in the film “Iron Man” visited Elon Musk in his office so he can reincarnate his personality.
Elon is also the Founder and CEO of Space Exploration technologies also known as SpaceX and the CEO of Tesla.
Elon is so interested in AI that he co-founded Neuralink and created a non-profit research company named OpenAI
Early Life
Elon Musk was born June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, South Africa, he was the older brother of Kimbal musk and Tosca musk. His mother Maye Musk was a model and his father Errol Musk was an engineer.
As a child, he stared at the sky for hours. His family thinks that he was deaf, but Elon had a photographic memory he was thinking and imagined things all the time.
As a child, he stared at the sky for hours. His family thinks that he was deaf, but Elon had a photographic memory he was thinking and imagined things all the time.
Elon was a book Lover he read all the time. Sometimes he reads teen hours a day on the weekend days he finishes two books a day. At the age of nine, Elon read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica.
In 1980 Elon’s parents divorced, Elon went to live with his father in Pretoria so he will not be lonely. Elon’s father is a tough man but Elon learned a lot from him, later he describes him as “a terrible human being… Almost every evil thing you could possibly think of, he has done.”
Elon’s childhood was a period of suffering not just at home with his father but also in school because he was an awkward and introverted child, Elon was bullied by the bigger kids one time he got hospitalized after a group of boys threw him down a flight of stairs.
When Elon visited the mall he saw a computer for the first time, he was excited to find a machine that you program to do exactly what you want. After having it, Elon finished the programming basic book that came with the computer. The book is supposed to be completed in 6 months but he finished it in 3 days without sleeping.
In 1984 and at the age of 12 Elon sold the code of the game he developed called Blastar to PC and Office Technology magazine for $500.
Elon at school wasn’t so good. He was doing good just in the Subjects that matter to him like Physics and computer science but in the other subject not because he thinks that having good points in the subjects that don’t matter to him it’s not important.
so he reinvested that time to write software and play video games, the type of games that are complicated and need strategies. He attended Waterkloof House Preparatory School and Bryanston High School before graduating from Pretoria Boys High School.
Elon was Impressed by the American dream and also wanted to avoid the mandatory service because his mother is Canadian he applied for a Canadian passport in 1989. Elon arrived in Canada he went to live with his family and there he worked at odd jobs so he can make some money.
In 1990 Musk enrolled at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, and in 1992 he transferred to the University of Pennsylvania. Five years later he graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in economics from the Wharton School and a Bachelor of Arts degree in physics.
Musk 1994 held two internships one in silicon valley at energy storage called pinnacle Research Institute and the second one at the Palo Alto-based startup Rocket Science Games.
Musk got accepted to a PD.D program in energy physics/materials science at Stanford University in California. But He dropped out of Stanford after two days because he saw potential on the internet and then he launched his first startup.
Career
Zip2
Elon Musk’s first startup with his brother was Global link information network but then they renamed it to Zip2 in 1995 it was like a mix of Yelp and google maps it was like a digital version of the yellow pages. and in February 1999 Compaq acquired Zip2 for $307 million in cash and Elon musk received $22 million for his 7 percent share so now Elon is a millionaire with a net worth of $22 million.
X.com & Paypal
After that Elon starts thinking about his next big project and guest what ! yes the banking industry he thinks why are you going to get out of your home and walk to an ATM or a bank branch to do a transaction. He thinks that you can do it from home using the internet.
In 1999 Elon co-founded X.com an online financial services and e-mail payment company. The company was the first online bank to be federally insured. He also bought a McLaren F1 that cost $1 million so he can join the big boys club where the wealthy people are so later they will invest money in his projects. And the other money he invested in X.com. In the first month, over 200,000 customers joined the service.
In the following years the first competitors show up a company called Confinity which owns Paypal Founded by Max Levchin and Peter Thiel, the competition was fierce and unnecessary so they merged and became today’s Paypal. Elon was the bigger shareholder among all of the others.
The merge came with Pros and Cons. The pros are getting over $100 million from the investors and the Cons are the ways of administration, the type of the services that they provide, the technical problems that make the website crashes once a week, and the swindling and stealing that happen in the platform.
In 2000 when Elon had a trip with his wife Justine Musk to Sydney the biggest coup in silicon valley happened, the board ousted Musk and replaced him with Thiel.
In 2002 Paypal was acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion in stock and Elon’s net worth became over $100 million.
Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX)
After the dirty 30 and the quarter-life crisis Elon felt that he needed to do something special and unique, he got involved with a nonprofit Mars Society that has a project of placing a growth chamber for plants on mars and he discussed funding the project himself.
So to do this project he needs a rocket so he travels to Moscow to buy refurbished Intercontinental ballistic missiles. The company wanted to sell one rocket for $8 million but Elon rejected it and returned empty-handed.
In 2002 Elon Founded Space Exploration Technologies also known as SpaceX with his own $100 million to build his own rockets. Being the first private company to successfully launch a rocket to Earth orbit in the world wasn’t easy SpaceX failed at launching three rockets but in 2008 the fourth launch was a big success and SpaceX received $1.6 billion worth of business.
Tesla
On the other hand, there were two business partners Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning, who founded Tesla in 2003. They needed a $7 million investment, Elon invested $6.5 million so he became the chairman of Tesla’s board of directors. In 2017 after a series of escalating conflicts Eberhard was ousted from the firm and Elon Musk became the CEO and product architect in 2008.
Tesla’s first car was the Roadstar it was a Disaster like what Elon Admits to Shareholders. After the production they found major problems with the car, the plan was to sell the car for $85 thousand but to build it they spent $200 thousand second problem is the transmission and other problems.
One day 50 articles got published about tesla’s problems, But all that didn’t stop Elon musk in 2012 Tesla built the Model S and it was the best selling electric car in the world with more than 500,000 units delivered and Motor Trend listed it as the car of the year for 2013.
SolarCity
In 2006 Elon musk provided the initial concept and financial capital for SolarCity which his cousin Lyndon co-founded and it was the second-largest provider of solar power systems in the United States. In 2016 Tesla acquired SolarCity for over $2 billion.
Neuralink & AI
Musk co-founded Neuralink in 2016 a neurotechnology startup company to integrate the human brain with AI. Neuralink’s purpose is to create devices that are embedded in the human brain to facilitate the merging of the brain with machines. he also create OpenAi in 2015 a not-for-profit artificial intelligence (AI) research company that develops artificial intelligence intended to be safe and beneficial to humanity.
The Boring Company
In 2016 Elon founded The Boring Company after he got nuts by the traffic, the company constructed tunnels underground to make transportation faster and cheaper.
Hyperloop
Elon also announced plans for a version of a vactrain, with the help of engineers from Tesla and SpaceX to start working on the initial designs, and in 2013 the alpha design was published in a whitepaper posted in Tesla and SpaceX blogs.
Real Estate
Elon Musk has a real estate portfolio of five houses worth $100 million and he is planning to sell it all so he will own no house as he tweeted.
Personal Life
Elon Musk has lived in California since 2000 and he doesn’t give a lot of details about his personal life one time he said “rather stick a fork in my hand than write about my personal life”. We know that Elon dated some Hollywood stars and actresses and other artists.
Elon’s first wife was the Canadian author Justine Wilson he met her while attending Queen’s University. They have been married 8 years from 2000 to 2008 and got the first son Nevada that passed away aged 10 weeks but they welcomed twin Griffin Musk and Xavier Musk, born in 2004.
Elon married the English actress Talulah Riley in 2008 and in 2016 they divorce a second time.
Then he dated Amber Heard for several months in 2017. Next year Elon dated the Canadian musician Grimes and she gave birth to his son named X Æ A-12.
Criticism
Every successful person gets criticism in one way or another, some people think that Elon is a businessman that just cares for his own profits and makes his employees work long hours under huge stress, others think that why we will need to do research on mars wasting billions of dollars while there is poverty in the world.
Some people say that why we will need electric cars while people with average income can’t afford to buy them.
Books About Elon Musk
- Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future Ashlee Vance
- Elon Musk: The Life, Lessons & Rules For Success
Favorite Quotes
- When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.
- Some people don’t like change, but you need to embrace change if the alternative is a disaster.
- Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.
- Persistence is very important. You should not give up unless you are forced to give up.
- I don’t think it’s a good idea to plan to sell a company.
- It’s OK to have your eggs in one basket as long as you control what happens to that basket.
Summary
Elon Musk is a genius and a self-made billionaire with a net worth of $200 billion, a lot of people call him the real-life iron man because of the nature of his work to save the future of humanity and make the world a better place. Elon is one of the most influential and important people in the world.
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